


line and inclination

by psikeval



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, M/M, Marking, Possessive Behavior, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 04:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: Sometimes it's about the ink, and sometimes it's the canvas.





	line and inclination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valdasine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valdasine/gifts).



_february._

“Hey, boss,” McCree says one night, when the briefing’s done for the Panama mission and Jesse’s lingered behind the rest of them, bent crookedly over the table and Gabe’s hard copy of the mission report. Gabe himself is almost out the door, but he stops for the sound of Jesse’s voice, weight rocking back onto the heels of his feet until he is balanced, solid and still. Waiting, eyebrows raised, while Jesse points at what’s on the paper with trailing fingers. “These yours?”

Gabe doesn’t quite wince — it’d be better to say he glares, because that’s normally what his face does when something’s come up and he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Got bored.”

“Huh. Didn’t take you for the doodling type.”

A small and petty part of Gabe is irritated, because he doesn’t _doodle_. That’s a stupid word that only rhymes with other stupid words, and Gabe isn’t seven years old and scribbling daisies with crayon. (Even at that age, he preferred pens—heavy, solid lines of ink, easier to control.) 

“Aren’t I just a wellspring of surprises,” he says without energy or inflection.

Not that reticence does him any good. McCree grins at him anyway. “That you are, boss.”

Jesse pockets the report, and Gabe pretends not to notice. It’s how things tend to go, between the two of them.

 

 

_april._

There are downsides to the super-soldier rewiring, things that were deprioritized by the medical team when testing their way through subjects, trying to make the perfect fighter. Things like attention span, and short-term memory, traded for passive perception. They notice more, _see_ more of the world around them, but it’s holding on to details that’s gotten harder.

So when Agent Sukhoi outlines the changes to interdepartmental memo policy addressing multi-task-force operations, something Gabe’s never even _considered_ trying to care about, he knows it won’t stick. It’s why he carries a tablet around, to make notes about trivial shit.

He definitely left the tablet on his desk this morning when he went down towards the barracks to supervise new recruits at the practice range.

“Hey,” Jesse murmurs, rolling up his sleeve, and before Gabe can even begin to guess what’s happening, Jesse lays his right arm on the table between them. “Here.”

“Really, McCree?” he growls under his breath in disbelief.

Jesse just shrugs, unaffected, keeps his arm extended on the table. “Suit yourself.”

And the hell of it is, Gabe really does need to write it down.

He doesn’t press as hard as he would on paper but he can still feel muscles and tendon and soft spongy veins beneath his pen, and each letter is jagged with how Gabe skitters away from it, from every warm and living inch of Jesse’s body. 

Two days later, when he’s watching Shimada spar with McCree, Gabe’s eyes catch on Jesse’s bare forearm, still faintly lined with residual ink. And it feels like he’s suffocating, all of a sudden, like all the air in the world got lost in the marks he made on Jesse’s skin, there for everyone to see; it feels to Gabe as if he might as well have written his own goddamn name. He wishes he’d never done it, and hopes that everyone who sees it knows exactly what it should mean.

Jesse catches him looking, and glances down at his arm, then back at Gabe, his eyes narrowed in that goddamned canny way of his. Considering, like he does when he’s spotted a target.

Not a single fucking thing about it bodes well for Gabe at all.

 

 

 _august_. 

“Seriously, boss? That’s when you knew?”

“How many times have I told you—”

“No ‘boss’ in bed, yeah, I hear ya. I’m gonna make you come around on ‘sir,’ though.”

“Doubtful,” says Gabe, who has never once doubted Jesse’s ability to get him going with just about any damn word there is, when he tries. 

“Anyway, you’re changin’ the subject.” 

“ _Yes_ ,” he growls through gritted teeth. “Are you happy now?”

Jesse smiles, though not right at Gabe; he’s looking down at the fresh design curling its way around his arm, ghostly shadows and the bones of things all etched in inky black. There was a long voice-only call to Overwatch and the UN today, and Gabe had needed something to do with his hands. Looking at it now makes his fingers twitchy again, wanting to touch.

“Yeah. I am.” Jesse turns his arm a little, admiring the lines, then steals a sidelong glance at Gabe through his lashes. “Maybe next time you should write your name.”

It was such an awful fucking mistake to admit so potent a weakness, when words like that go straight to Gabe’s dick. He groans and flips Jesse facedown on the mattress, muffling the bright ring of his laughter, and not much else gets said between them for the rest of the night.

 

 

_december._

It’s snowing at Blackwatch headquarters. Has been for hours, and now that night’s fallen you can only see the snowflakes as they drift through beams of light, briefly sparkling gold before they fall back into darkness. The accumulation of snow on the ground, a thick white blanket half-glowing under the stars, has been steady since late afternoon.

“Ready and waitin’,” Jesse drawls from the bed.

He’s naked, very comfortably so, and Gabe just drinks in the sight for a while—the lazy sprawl of Jesse, muscled limbs and mechanical arm, the faint lines where the sun has tanned him a darker shade of brown. It’s so fucking rare, getting time to spend like this.

But of course, there’s more than one reason for that: Jesse props himself up on his elbows, lifts his eyebrows expectantly at Gabe. “Emphasis on the _waitin’_.”

“Calm your ass down, McCree,” he grumbles, sitting down and stealing a sip of Jesse’s mostly-bourbon hot toddy, a lazy half-assed version of the recipe Angela tried to teach them. Gabe spreads a hand over Jesse’s hip and presses down, just slightly, over the bruise he made last night, because he can. Because it’s there, and Jesse’s here, and his.

Jesse hums into the first soft brushes of the felt-tip pen on his skin, settling comfortably into the sheets. He’ll fall asleep like this, like it’s easy, and in the morning when Gabe fucks him again he’ll be eager and hopelessly loud; he’ll make coffee and won’t share until Gabe’s dragged himself out from under the blankets to be _hugged_ , and though Jesse won’t say a word, he’ll let Gabe trace the lines on his skin for as long as he likes when they fall back into bed.

He knows these things and keeps writing, steady script over Jesse’s shoulders. The way it unfolds, precisely like you knew it would; there is beauty in that. He likes the way it looks.

 


End file.
